Top OPEC officials have retaliated against NOPEC, new US legislation aimed at regulating the group’s output, claiming that such moves will further destabilise energy markets.
Suhail Al Mazrouei, the UAE’s energy minister, told CNBC on Tuesday that OPEC is being wrongly blamed for the energy crisis, and that measures by US politicians to undermine the group’s established production mechanism may cause oil prices to rise by as much as 300 percent.
During a discussion at the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi, Al Mazrouei told CNBC’s Dan Murphy, “If you hamper that system, you need to monitor what you’re asking for, because having a chaotic market would see… a 200 percent or 300 percent increase in prices that the world cannot sustain.”
On Thursday, a bipartisan Senate committee passed the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill 17-4, marking a big step forward in the decades-old concept.
NOPEC bill, which aims to shield Americans from artificially high energy prices, would expose the alliance to antitrust lawsuits for arranging supply restrictions that raise global petroleum prices.
It must now be enacted by both the Senate and the House of Representatives before being signed into law by the president.
Consuming countries, such as the United States and Japan, have pressed OPEC and its partners to increase crude oil production in the face of rising prices and inflation. Brent oil was trading at over $102 a barrel on Tuesday.
Al Mazrouei acknowledged that some members were falling short of their production targets, but said the alliance was doing its lot to meet global demand despite persistent geopolitical constraints, such as the Ukraine conflict.
“We, OPEC+, cannot provide 100 percent of the world’s demand,” he stated. “Our share is based on how much we generate.” And I’m willing to wager that we’re doing a lot more.”
